Review: ‘Falling Awake’

A Bronx-based street drama that recycles every imaginable trope.

It’s all about the shoes: A Bronx-based street drama that recycles every imaginable trope, helmer Agustin’s “Falling Awake” is underacted, overheated and uses a pair of purloined, high-end sneakers as a 400-pound allegory for getting your priorities straight. Pic stepped into limited release Jan. 29 and looks to be headed nowhere.

When he lets a buddy use the gas station where he works to stash his stolen van, Jay (Andrew Cisneros) is rewarded with a pair of golden shoes, which almost cost him his life a couple of times as he tries to woo the lovely Alessandra (Jenna Dewan), cope with his screaming father (Nestor Serrano) and understand why his brother Eddie (Nicholas Gonzalez) is back from Afghanistan and booted out of the Marines. There’s a lot going on, not a lot of it believable or engaging, in a film that’s equal parts “West Side Story” and “Hamburger Hill.”